Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya runs in the New York City Marathon in New York, November 3, 2013. Defending champion Mutai and Priscah Jeptoo won the men's and women's races at the New York City Marathon on Sunday for a Kenyan sweep in chilly, windy conditions through the city's five boroughs. REUTERS/Adam Hunger (UNITED STATES - Tags: SPORT ATHLETICS) Photo: Reuters

What followed - according to email exchanges, letters, bank records and invoices - has led to a major scandal in Kenya, a country in the midst of its biggest war against corruption in years.

In a contract signed several years ago, Nike agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in honorariums and a one-time $US500,000 ($A670,000) "commitment bonus," which one former administrative assistant inside Kenya's athletics federation calls a bribe.

The money was supposed to be used to help train and support poor Kenyan athletes who dream of running their way out of poverty. Instead, it was immediately sucked out of the federation's bank account by a handful of Kenyan officials and kept off the books.

Nike has denied any wrongdoing, saying in a statement that its payments were intended to help athletes, and it does not appear to be under investigation by U.S. authorities.

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But Kenyan authorities are suspicious. They have opened an extensive investigation, and all three Kenyan athletics officials accused of taking money from Nike have been suspended. Investigators with Kenya's Directorate of Criminal Investigations said they had asked Nike repeatedly to provide more information. So far, they say, Nike has refused.

"Why was such a huge sum of money paid as commitment?" said one of the detectives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. "It's only Nike who can tell us."

John Githongo, one of Kenya's leading voices against corruption, said the U.S. government should pick up this case and "run with it."

For more than 20 years, Nike Inc. has been paying the Kenyan national runners' association millions of dollars in exchange for the Kenyans wearing Nike's signature swoosh, superb advertising in the running world.

Kenyans hold world records in the 800 meters, 1,000 meters, 3,000 meters, 20,000 meters, 25,000 meters, 30,000 meters, the marathon, half marathon - the list goes on. Professional runners from other countries say they feel a sense of dread every time the Kenyans show up at a track meet in their red, green and black uniforms and start doing their toe-touches.

Ethiopian runners, who also excel at middle- and long-distance races, have a sponsorship agreement with Adidas, but an official there said there was no commitment bonus in their contract. Several professional runners said they had heard of signing bonuses for individual athletes, but never such a large one-time bonus for a national federation.

Kenyan athletes were so outraged when they learned in November that hundreds of thousands of dollars from Nike had been stolen by their bigwigs that they staged a protest at their headquarters in Nairobi, with elite athletes camped out in the grass and holding up signs that read "blood sucers." (Some of the runners never finished school.)

Now, one question the Kenyan detectives are trying to answer is whether Nike intentionally made it easy for the officials to pocket the money.

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The allegations go back to 2009, when Kenyan officials, according to the email chain, accused Nike of treating Kenya as a "dumping ground" for substandard Nike clothing.

But those complaints may have been a ruse by Kenyan officials to get out of the Nike contract so they could receive a bribe from another company, said a member of the executive board of Kenya's track and field federation, known as Athletics Kenya.

Soon after complaining to Nike, officials at Kenya's running federation struck a new sponsorship deal with the Li-Ning Co., a Chinese sports empire founded by a famous gymnast, Li Ning. A marketing agent, working as a middleman between the Chinese company and the Kenyan federation, then sent nearly $US200,000 ($A270,000) to Athletics Kenya, money that a top official quickly withdrew.

The sports-marketing agent who made the payment, Papa Massata Diack, was recently banned for life by the International Association of Athletics Federations, a global governing body for track and field. Both he and his father, Lamine Diack, a former head of the international athletics association, are under investigation by French authorities in connection with several allegations, including blackmail and bribery.

The Kenyan officials even began talking about designing new Li-Ning uniforms, but they soon learned that shaking off the Nike sponsorship deal was harder than they thought.

After they received a letter from a Nike lawyer saying there were no legal grounds to terminate the contract, the Kenyan officials abruptly changed course. They negotiated a new contract in which Nike agreed to pay Athletics Kenya an annual sponsorship fee of $US1.3 million to $US1.5 million - plus $US100,000 honorariums each year and a one-time $US500,000 "commitment bonus."

"Whenever I see the words 'commitment fees,''commitment bonuses,''access fees,''access bonuses,' that for me raises a red flag," said Githongo, currently a consultant who once headed an anti-corruption unit within the Kenyan government but quit - and fled the country for several years - after death threats. "It's language used to dress up bribes traditionally."

Nike executives refused to discuss the contract, issuing a short statement that the money paid to Athletics Kenya was supposed to support the athletes. It said that Nike conducted business with integrity and that "we are cooperating with the local authorities in their investigation," a point the Kenyan detectives clearly dispute.

Several analysts said Nike could not afford to lose the Kenyans. Running is integral to Nike's brand - Nike's founders made some of their first running shoe treads on waffle irons in the 1970s. And Kenyans are integral to running.

In the documents, Nike provided detailed instructions on how the $US100,000 yearly honorarium was to be used (to cover travel costs and phone bills, among other things). No details were provided for the commitment bonus, though, even after the former administrative assistant at Athletics Kenya, who worked there for more than 10 years, wrote to a Nike executive asking him.

In a sworn statement provided to Kenyan investigators, the former assistant said the $US500,000 commitment bonus was "bribe money from Nike" so that the top officials could pay back the $US200,000 from the scuttled deal with the Chinese company and then make even more by agreeing to sign up again with Nike. The former administrative assistant requested that his name not be revealed, saying it was extremely dangerous to expose high-level corruption in Kenya - a sentiment shared by others.

"Put that away! You could get killed for that!" exclaimed a member of Athletics Kenya's board, his eyes widening when a reporter pulled out the amended contract from Nike listing the $US500,000 commitment bonus during an interview at a quiet Nairobi restaurant.

The board member said he, too, had received death threats for speaking out about corruption and asked that his name not be used.

Analysts said this case was especially tricky because it did not appear to fall under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.S. law that covers crimes involving U.S. companies and foreign government officials. The Kenyan running association, while it receives some government money, is not a Kenyan government agency. "The world of sports has evolved in a governance hole," said Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado.

He noted that sports federations, like Athletics Kenya and FIFA, international soccer's governing body, which is embroiled in its own corruption saga, often fell between the cracks of the rules that governed businesses, public agencies and traditional nonprofit organizations, even though sports federations have qualities of all three.

Pielke said bribery, embezzlement and "unsavory, improper business practices" were common.

"I hear it all the time from sporting officials," he said. "'To survive in this world, these are the rules of the game.'"